Tuesday round-up

The first day of the Supreme Court’s 2020-21 term was a busy one. An eight-justice court heard oral arguments (via telephone) in Carney v. Adams, a First Amendment case about whether Delaware can choose its state judges based on party affiliation, and Texas v. New Mexico, a dispute about water rights along the Pecos River. In the first case, Amy Howe reports for SCOTUSblog (in a story first published at Howe on the Court), the justices seemed skeptical of Delaware’s party-affiliation rules but also were concerned about the challenger’s legal standing. In the second case, Reed Benson writes that most members of the court seemed inclined to side with New Mexico. Also on Monday, the court released a long list of orders, which contained no new cert grants but called for the views of the federal government in three cases and contained a notable statement from Justice Clarence Thomas criticizing the court’s 2015 ruling on same-sex marriage. And on Monday night, in an emergency order, the court reinstated a South Carolina requirement for voters to sign absentee-ballot envelopes in the presence of a witness.

Here are some other links of note on the court’s new term:

• Supreme Court Opens Term With Case on Partisanship of Judges in Delaware (Jess Bravin, The Wall Street Journal)
• Supreme Court Opens A New Term Amid A Push For Amy Coney Barrett’s Confirmation (Nina Totenberg, NPR)
• Trump’s New Supreme Court Is Coming for the Next Dozen Elections (Richard Hasen, New York magazine)
• Supreme Court Won’t Hear Challenge to Union Exclusive Representation (Mark Walsh, Education Week)
• The Trump Administration’s Surprising Attack On Religious Freedom Reaches The Supreme Court (Nick Sibilla, Forbes)
• The Consequential Cases in the Supreme Court’s 2020-21 Term (Pacific Legal Foundation video)
• Should a College Be Held Accountable for Violating a Student’s Freedom of Speech? This Supreme Court Case Will Decide (Howard Slugh, The Daily Signal)
• SCOTUS Startles Liberals As It Rebuffs Clerk Who Withheld Marriage Licenses From Gay Couples (Kevin Daley, The Washington Free Beacon)
• Chief Justice Roberts: America’s Chief Guardian of Corporate Power (Richard Trumka, The American Prospect)
• The Supreme Court balance will shift with Barrett confirmation (Daniel Cotter, Chicago Law Bulletin)
• Supreme Court Rejects Decade-Old Class Arbitration Employment Discrimination Case (Cristina Carvajal, CPR Speaks)

We rely on our readers to send us links for our round-up. If you have or know of a recent (published in the last two or three days) article, post, podcast or op-ed relating to the Supreme Court that you’d like us to consider for inclusion, please send it to roundup@scotusblog.com. Thank you!